"And what is that to me, Catherine?" she cried out. "Sure it is but to thy shame if thou hast loved unsought and confessed unasked. And if I had ten thousand sisters, and they all in love with him, as well they might be, for there is no one like him in the whole world, over all their hearts would I go, rather than he should miss me for but a second, if he loved me. Think you that aught like that can make a difference? Think you that one heart can outweigh two, and the misery of one be of any account before that of three?"
Then suddenly she looked sharply at her sister and cried out angrily:
"Catherine Cavendish, I know what this means. 'Tis but another device to part us. You love him not. You have hated him from the first. You have hated him, and he is no more guilty than you be. 'Tis but a trick to turn me from him. Fie, think you that will avail? Think you that a sister's heart counts with a maid before her lover's? Little you know of love and lovers to think that."
Then to my great astonishment, since I had never seen such weakness in her before, Catherine flung up her hands before her face and burst into such a storm of wild weeping as never was, and fled into the house, and Mary and I stood alone together, but only for a second, for Mary, also casting a glance at me, then about her at the utter loneliness and silence of the world, fled in her turn. Then I went to my room, but not to sleep nor to think altogether of love, for my Lord Culpeper was to sail that day, and the next night was appointed for the beginning of the plant cutting.
XVI
I know not if my Lord Culpeper had any inkling of what was about to happen. Some were there who always considered him to be one who feathered his own nest with as little risk as might be, regardless of those over and under him, and one who saw when it behooved him to do so, and was blind when it served his own ends, even with the glare of a happening in his eyes. And many considered that he was in England when it seemed for his own best good without regard to the king or the colony, but that matters not, at this date. In truth his was a ticklish position, between two fires. If he remained in Virginia it was at great danger to himself, if he sided not with the insurgents; and on the other hand there was the certainty of his losing his governorship and his lands, and perhaps his head, if he went to tobacco-cutting with the rest of us. He was without doubt better off on the high sea, which is a sort of neutral place of nature, beyond the reach for the time, of mobs or sceptres, unless one falls in with a black flag. At all events, off sailed my Lord Culpeper, leaving Sir Henry Chichely as Lieutenant-Governor, and verily he might as well have left a weather-cock as that well-intentioned but pliable gentleman. Give him but a head wind over him and he would wax fierce to order, and well he served the government in the Bacon uprising, but leave him to his own will and back and forth he swung with great bluster but no stability. None of the colony, least of all the militia, stood in awe of Sir Henry Chichely, nor regarded him as more than a figure-head of authority when my Lord Culpeper had set sail.
The morning of the day after the sailing, the people of Jamestown whom one happened to meet on the road had a strange expression of countenance, and I doubt not that a man skilled in such matters could have read as truly the signs of an eruption of those forces of human passion in the hearts of men, as of an earthquake by the belching forth of smoke and fire from the mouth of a volcano. Everybody looked at his neighbour with either a glare of doubt and wariness, or with covert understanding, and some there were who had a pale seriousness of demeanour from having a full comprehension of the situation and of what might come of it, though not in the least drawing back on that account, and some were all flushed and glowing with eagerness and laughing from sheer delight in danger and daring, and some were like stolid beasts of the field watching the eye of a master, ready at its wink to leap forth to the strain of labour or fury. Many of these last were of our English labourers, whom I held in some sort of pity, and doubt as to whether it were just and merciful to draw them into such a stew kettle, for in truth many of them had not a pound of tobacco to lose by the Navigation Act, and no more interest in the uprising than had the muskets stacked in Major Robert Beverly's first wife's tomb. Yet, I pray, what can men do without tools, and have not tools some glory of their own which we take small account of, and yet which may be a recompense to them?
Nevertheless, I saw with some misgivings these honest fellows plodding their ways, ready to leap to their deaths maybe at the word of command, when it did not concern their own interests in the least, and especially when they had not that order of mind which enables a man to have a delight in glory and in serving those broad ends of humanity which include a man to his own loss.
Early that morning the news spread that Colonel Kemp of the Gloucester militia and a troop of horse and foot had been sent secretly against some plant-cutters in Gloucester County who had arisen before us, and had taken prisoners some twenty-two caught in the act. The news of the sending came first, I think, from Major Robert Beverly, the Clerk of the Assembly, who had withheld the knowledge for some time, inasmuch as he disliked the savour of treachery, but being in his cups that night before at Barry Upper Branch, out it came. 'Twas Dick Barry who told me. I fell in with him and Captain Jaynes on the Jamestown road that morning. "Colonel Kemp hath ridden against the rioters in Gloucester with foot and horse, by order of the general court, and Beverly hath been knowing to it all this time," he said gloomily. Then added that a man who served on two sides had no strength for either, and one who had raised his hand against Bacon had best been out of the present cause. But Captain Jaynes swore with one of his broadsides of mighty oaths that 'twas best as 'twas, since Beverly had some influence over the militia, and that he was safe enough not to turn traitor with his great store of tobacco at stake, and that should the court proceed to extremes with the Gloucester plant-cutters, such a flame would leap to life in Virginia as would choke England with the smoke of its burning.
We knew no more than the fact of the sending, but that afternoon came riding into Jamestown colonel Kemp with a small body of horse, having left the rest and the foot in Gloucester, there to suppress further disorder, and with him, bound to their saddles, some twenty-two prisoners, glaring about them with defiant faces and covered with dust and mire, and some with blood.